The Strange Beauty of Sandstorms

Powerful winds recently drove sand from the Sahara Desert across the Mediterranean Sea into southern Europe and as far as the ski slopes in Sochi, Russia, turning skies red and leaving behind orange-frosted snow. Dust storms range from the size of a tiny dust devil, to a cloud that might cover a continent. In dry regions, strong winds can suddenly create a “haboob,” a rolling wall of sand or dust that rises thousands of feet in the air, blanketing an area ahead of a storm. Some storms can whip particles high into the atmosphere for days, carrying sand across oceans. Gathered here are images from recent years of dust storms, sandstorms, haboobs, and the eerie skies that accompany these phenomena.

Red dust envelops the Sydney Harbour Bridge on September 23, 2009, in Sydney, Australia. Sydney residents woke that morning to one of the worst "red dust" storms in the city's history, as a blanket of red dust hit the city just before dawn.#

A Fulani nomad drives his cow in a sandstorm raised by the "Harmattan wind" north of Agadez, Niger, on December 19, 2006. The wind sweeps down from the Sahara desert between December and March, bringing with it a thick dusty haze.#

U.S. Army engineer, Sergeant First Class Russel, consults his compass to find direction between the cities of Najaf and Karbala, Iraq, as a sandstorm turned the daylight orange in the opening week of the Iraq War, on March 26, 2003.#

An internally displaced boy, who fled a military offensive in the Swat valley region, covers his face with his clothes while walking through a dust storm at the UNHCR Jalozai camp, about 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, on July 2, 2009.#

People dance at a sound camp in the middle of a dust storm during the Burning Man 2012 "Fertility 2.0" arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada on August 31, 2012. (Not to be confused with Micah Horn's viral not-a-concert-but-a-cotton-field photo.)#

Dust and sand storms in the Middle East and other arid regions tend to come in two forms. "Haboobs" are dramatic events associated with storm fronts, and often appear as walls of sand and dust marching across the landscape. But like thunderstorms, haboobs tend to be abrupt and short-lived. Then there are the long-lived, wide-reaching dust storms that can last for days. In Iraq, such storms are often associated with the "shamal," a pattern of persistent northwesterly winds. In 2015, a storm with characteristics of both the shamal and the haboob moved across Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf region. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the dust storm on September 1, 2015. The dust event first appeared in NASA satellite imagery along the Iraq–Syria border on August 31. By the next day, the storm took on the cyclonic shape visible in this image. By September 2, the dust cloud reached the Persian Gulf, and had spread out across the entire basin by the following day.#

A 1937 photo of a dust storm approaching Springfield, Colorado. The late 1930s in central North America were the Dust Bowl years, a period where extensive drought and poor farming practices led to years of severe dust storms and widespread ecological damage.#

Private First Class Brandon Voris, 19, of Lebanon, Ohio, from the First Battalion Eighth Marines Alpha Company, stands in the middle of his camp as a sandstorm hits his remote outpost near Kunjak, in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on October 28, 2010.#

German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this image of an extensive sandstorm, punctuated by the white clouds of thunderstorms over the Sahara desert while aboard the International Space Station in 2014.#

After a passing sandstorm, workers walk past the dust-covered national grand theatre in Beijing, China, on April 17, 2006. Experts advised residents to stay indoors, or to wear masks when going out for their health as the dusty weather continued the following day, China Daily reported.#

Seen from orbit, a massive sandstorm sweeps across the Persian Gulf state of Qatar as it races southward toward southeastern Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on February 15, 2004. A major upper-level low pressure system over southwestern Asia led to a series of storms sweeping through the area.#

A Burning Man participant walks through a desert dust storm in formal clothes on her way to a wedding in the middle of the desert on the third day of the Burning Man arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, on August 30, 2017.#